Using buy-side managers’ evaluation of sell-side analysts via vote, we extract a sell-side analyst’s residual vote after controlling the analyst’s ability. When the residual vote is related to the analyst’s unexplained ability, e.g. good relationship, then sophisticated investor’s response after the analyst’s revision will be greater. When the residual is related to optimistic bias from possible affiliation, the analyst’s revision will be discounted. We find that after analyst’s earnings forecast changes, normalized net-trading volume of the buy-side institutions significantly follows the direction of the revision and responds more when the revision is by an analyst with larger residual vote. Individual investors significantly reverse on average but the response does not differ significantly conditional on the residual vote. After controlling both residual vote and revision size, buy-side institution seems to discount the response as the magnitude of the revision increases after revision of analysts with larger residual vote. The discounted response supports that the residual vote may be related to optimism. On the contrary individual investors follow the analyst’s revision more. As a result, individual investors are losing their money while buy-side institutions are making money depending on awareness optimism. The residual vote is indeed related to the optimistic bias of analyst ex-post. As a sell-side analyst recommend or forecast more optimistic relative the analyst’s competing analysts, the analyst is likely to earn more votes from buy-side managers.